Mistakes Aren’t the Problem—How You Lead Through Them Is

Part 2 in a series on reframing fear and failure for creative leadership

Last week we left off with Dr. Ellen Langer—a Harvard psychologist, mindfulness pioneer, and late-blooming painter—who gave me one of the most enduring frameworks for thinking about mistakes.

In a podcast conversation, we spoke about how creative people respond when things go wrong. She described four typical reactions:

1. Discard the work entirely.

2. Ignore the mistake and push through.

3. Try to erase the mistake and restore the original vision.

4. Reinterpret the mistake—and let it change the work.
   

That fourth response—the reinterpretation—is where real innovation happens. Not as damage control, but as collaboration with the unexpected.

“Mistakes are often defined by rigid expectations,” Langer told me. “But when we’re mindful, they become discoveries.”

This is where I want to begin Part 2 because reinterpreting a mistake is easier said than done, especially for leaders.

It’s The Leader Mindset

“There aren’t that many rules that exist in creatively driven pursuits. It’s what makes it incredibly exciting—but it requires a fair amount of guts, patience, and resilience.”

— Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney

When I talk about creative ventures, people often picture animation studios, marketing agencies, or product design labs. But I’ve come to believe: If innovation is part of your strategy—you’re in a creative venture.

You may not wear the title of artist, but if you’re tasked with bringing something new into the world, uncertainty is baked into the process.

And with uncertainty comes the chance to make, what we might call, mistakes.

That’s why reframing mistakes isn’t just an intellectual exercise—it’s leadership work. It’s about creating the space where new ideas can move, even if they stumble.

And while I’m using the word mistake here, I know many leaders feel the weight of failure instead.

A misstep becomes a misfire. A glitch becomes a collapse.

In creative ventures, the line between mistake and failure is often blurred—because small errors can feel consequential, and larger setbacks are sometimes just the sum of overlooked details.

That’s why reframing isn’t optional—it’s part of what leadership is. Because when it comes to creativity, the real blockers aren’t always processes or policies—it’s often the people leading them.

As one brand manager in financial services put it in the LIONS State of Creativity 2024 report:

“The CEO is the number one blocker.”

So: How do you, as a leader, make room for mistakes without losing sight of standards or strategy?

There’s no one right answer. But there are powerful frames.

Failure as Investment

For Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, failure isn’t just something to endure—it’s something to budget for.

“While we don’t want too many failures, we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future,” he writes in his book, Creativity, Inc.

At Pixar, this isn’t metaphorical—it’s an actual line item. The price of doing new, uncertain, creative work.

But I can imagine what you might be thinking right now: “Sure, Catmull can say that. He was the co-founder of Pixar. I’m just an employee—or a manager in a risk-averse culture. I don’t get that kind of freedom.”

If that’s where your mind went—you’re not alone. McKinsey research found that 85% of executives and innovation practitioners agree that fear¹—whether it’s fear of failure, fear of criticism, or fear of career consequences—often or always hinders innovation inside their organizations.

This fear isn’t rare. It’s the norm.

That’s why leaders like Catmull make failure explicit. If it’s invisible, it festers. But if it’s budgeted for, named, planned, it becomes something to work with—not something to fear.

When we treat failure as an investment—just like R&D—it stops being something we hope to avoid. It becomes something we know we’ll spend. Wisely.

So, here is a suggestion. As a leader, consider budgeting time and resources specifically for learning. Define a percentage—whether it’s 5% of your team’s time or a line item in dollars—as your investment in mistakes. Make it visible. Make it intentional. When mistakes arise, you’ll know: this is what we planned for. This is the cost of doing new work.

Because budgeting for failure isn’t giving up on success. It’s how you create the space to reach it.

Failure as Practice

Ed Catmull’s colleague Andrew Stanton—writer and director behind Finding Nemo, WALL-E, and some of Pixar’s most beloved stories—offers another way to frame mistakes: as practice.

Stanton draws an analogy to learning guitar.
Imagine telling someone who’s just picked up the instrument:

“You’d better think really hard about where you place your fingers, because you only get one strum. If you get it wrong, we’re done.”

It’s absurd. That’s not how anyone learns an instrument—or anything worth doing.
You strum. It sounds terrible. You adjust. Strum again. And again. Over time, something resembling music starts to emerge.

Stanton argues that creativity works the same way. It’s not about one perfect attempt—it’s about iterations.
Mistake after mistake. Strum after strum. That’s how skills are built. That’s how ideas evolve.

For leaders, adopting this frame transforms how you respond to uncertainty.
Instead of expecting flawless execution on the first try, you start to see mistakes as part of the learning curve—as the only way to move toward mastery.

Leaders who embrace this approach become more patient, more resilient, and far more willing to experiment.

Because the goal isn’t perfection.
It’s progress.

Fear as Fuel

Even with these frames—failure as investment, mistakes as practice—fear lingers. That’s where Jimmy Iovine brings a vital insight.

If you don’t know Iovine, he’s the co-founder of Interscope Records and Beats by Dre (if you haven’t read the piece I wrote about how he co-founded Beats, that’s a true example of business artistry). He’s spent decades working with iconic artists like Bruce Springsteen, U2, and Dr. Dre.

And he doesn’t pretend fear disappears. He reframes it as a marker of originality:

“The real thing is that we are all frightened. If you are not frightened, you are not original.”

For Iovine, fear isn't just something to overcome—it signals you're pushing boundaries. But his real insight is in the mental "judo trick" he describes:

"What you've got to do is get it as a tailwind instead of a headwind... And once you learn that, fear starts to excite you. Because you know that you are going to enter into something and try it and risk."

This isn't about eliminating fear but transforming its direction.

Leaders who avoid fear avoid the very work that leads to innovation. But those who practice this "judo trick"—who flip fear from obstacle to catalyst—find that it pushes them forward.

Maybe that’s what fear was always meant to do.

If we were our ancestors standing on the savannah, fear wasn’t just panic—it was propulsion. The lion at your back didn’t freeze you. It forced you to move. To climb a tree. Cross a river. Build a trap. Invent a way forward.

Fear sharpened creativity. It made survival possible.

The same is true now. The threats look different—but the mechanism is the same. When we use fear as fuel, it pushes us past comfort and into invention.

Before Leaders Can Shape Culture, They Have to Shape Their Mindset

These three frames work together as a comprehensive approach to creative leadership. Catmull’s investment mindset gives us permission—and resources—to make mistakes. Stanton’s practice perspective normalizes the iterative nature of creativity. Iovine’s reframing of fear provides the emotional resilience to keep moving forward when uncertainty feels overwhelming.

Together, they form a toolkit that doesn’t just accommodate mistakes—but actively transforms them into pathways to innovation.

It’s tempting to jump straight to systems—to install processes that encourage risk-taking or resilience. And those systems matter.

But mindset comes first.

Until you, as a leader, can sit with fear, follow the mistake, and stay open to being wrong, you can’t ask your teams to do the same.

This is where creative leadership begins:

Not with avoiding failure—but with seeing it differently.

Not with eliminating fear—but with moving with it.

This is why we need to learn from the artistic process.

And that brings me back to Dr. Ellen Langer's idea. Imagine making a line in the "wrong" place on a drawing. You have the four choices: erase it, ignore it, discard the whole thing—or reinterpret it, letting it guide the work somewhere new.

That fourth choice—the reinterpretation—is where most of what we value in art comes from. But as Langer points out, our culture tends to teach the first three. Even the optimistic "every cloud has a silver lining" asks us to endure the bad and wait for the good, rather than work with what's right in front of us.

True leadership in business, like artistry, sees both the mistake and the possibility in the same stroke. It doesn't wait for the bad to pass. It moves with it.

That's the shift.

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In the next piece, we'll explore how mistakes don't just challenge us—they can lead to better outcomes, not just for individuals, but for entire organizations.

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• If helping your teams navigate failure and uncertainty creatively is part of your mission, this is what I teach. In my keynote talks, I help leaders and organizations reframe mistakes—not as setbacks, but as catalysts for innovation. Curious to explore how this could help your team? Let’s talk: nir [at] theartian.com

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  Thanks

  Nir

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1. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/taking-fear-out-of-innovation